In Dreams Awake

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

(Henry David Thoreau)

Wednesday, 18 May 2016

An Outright Stonker

Well, the good news is that I've finished the rewrite of The Death of Ghosts. Since I submitted it to Angry Robot that really needed to be done before they got back to me - which they still haven't, by the way. It's three and a half months now since the open submissions period closed. Maybe they like me.

The bad news is that I've torn something in my bad knee. I've been limping for a week now and it's getting worse rather than better. There's a hard bump on the top edge of the kneecap which is so tender that the moment I touch it I start yodelling. I suspect it's a knot of tendon or something similar. I see the doc on Wednesday so just got to wait until then.

Death of Ghosts is a great story. To an extent it's an old tale, the one where an ancient evil awakes and the poor people of today have to scrape together enough strength to defeat it, if they can. But I think I have a new spin on it. There isn't just a Big Bad from the past, there's a Big Good too, though of course it's not that clear-cut. At the end of Ghosts no one really knows what's going on, or why strange things keep happening. It's in volume two, for the moment called Mermaid's Purse, that answers begin to come.By the way, Mermaid's Purse is what people used to call skate's eggs, when they washed up on the beach. Google them, they're really weird.

I'm taking a break before I start that though. The deadline for this year's Yeovil Prize is the end of the month, and I want to submit Isles of Eternity - and that promises to be an outright stonker of a novel. It's packed with stuff, scholars and mad kings, power-hungry priests from the temples of countless gods... and a people called the goat-fish, who live in the marshes and are said, in myth, to know of an island where the waters bring immortality. The story follows Mani, a sort of professor who deals with the goat-fish, and an insane king named Sarru-kin who wants to live forever and comes trampling into Mani's life. So I'll do the opening 15,000 words or so of Eternity, submit it to Yeovil, and then go back to Mermaid's Purse.
Good thing I only work two days a week at the moment, eh?

Mind you, being at home isn't exactly restful, with a 3-month-old baby around. Izzy's sweet-natured, quiet and alert - until you put her down, or stop talking to her, or lie her in the cot, and so on. Then she turns into the Queen of Shriek, it's most vexing. Still, she sleeps through most nights now,, so I suppose I shouldn't complain. And I'm not, really. Look how gorgeous she is.

We're going to get her weighed again on Wednesday, for the first time in a month. My guess is she's close to a stone now. The way she eats, she should be the size of a hippo.